You are walking down the road with a friend
and come to a wreck. Your friend knows cars, so you point to one of the
fragments on the road and ask your him, "Is this a piece of the car, or
just a chip of rock?"

He explains: "This is one of the computer
chips that control the motor. It checks the sensors, processes the information
and gives commands. When the motor is cold, it provides a mixture richer
in gasoline than when it is hot. If it detects one thing or another in
the exhaust, it uses that information to change the mixture or the timing
to make the motor run more efficiently."

What made the chip? You have two choices:

It was put together by the blind forces
of nature.

It was developed by an intelligent designer.

We recognize things that were conceived
by a mind every day, but in the cases in which the designer of a complex
object could not be a person, we are told that we should not reason like
we do for everything else. Schoolbooks suggest that living cells, which
control far more complex operations than any chip, came about by chance
or by natural selection with no designer at all. As more and more has been
learned about the fantastic complexity of what were once thought to be
simple cells, the atheistic position has become ever more difficult to
maintain. Something is being done about that!

The new definition

The definition of science is being changed
in a way that will no longer permit the rather obvious conclusion that
God created living things. The term "science" once meant "knowledge discovered
by experimentation, observation and objective investigation." We were taught
that science was to be observable, testable, and repeatable. When one scientist
did an experiment, others could repeat his experiment, and obtain the same
results. If no one who repeated the experiment came up with the same results,
those results had been "falsified," that is, shown not to be true. This
definition of science has served us very well, but for those who teach
that life formed spontaneously with no Creator involved, it has become
a problem. They want to teach their philosophy as science, but the idea
that a first cell came together spontaneously from chemicals without a
Creator is an opinion about ancient history. It is not observable, testable,
or repeatable, so it does not fall under the usual definition of science.

To make the idea that the first life came
about with no help from an intelligent Creator appear scientific, science
is being redefined. Many are now insisting that science must explain all
that we observe by solely natural causes.

In Kansas the state guidelines redefined
science as, "The human activity of seeking natural explanations for what
we observe in the world around us."1

The meaning of the term, "natural explanations"
in this context is, "without any input by an intelligent creator." It is
used in place of saying, "atheistic explanations" which would stir up opposition.
Notice, it does not say, "The human activity of seeking the best explanations,"
or "the most probable explanations" or "the explanations indicated by the
evidence." The fact that it says that science is the "activity of seeking
natural explanations" means that when studying such things as the origin
of life, the new definition has already determined the conclusion before
the research has even begun! To these people, there can be no Creator.

Fry, a philosopher of science, puts it:

"… origin of life research consists in
looking for a naturalistic alternative to the idea of the creation of life
by a designer."2 In context she is responding to the very influential book, Darwin's
Black Box, by Michael Behe,
a professor of biochemistry. He makes the point that even the most simple
cell would not function without a certain number of essential parts. Behe
is not speaking of parts like arms and legs, but of parts on the molecular
level. He uses as an illustration the common mouse trap, the kind with
a base, a wire that snaps down, etc. If even one part of a mouse trap is
eliminated it will not catch mice. It has as few parts as it can have and
still work. Behe calls this "irreducible complexity" because the machine
will not work if even one part is taken away. This applies to cells because
they also need a certain number of parts to work. Because none of these
parts would work without the others, all of the really essential parts
must have been present from the first. This is strong evidence for an intelligent
designer, and against the idea that a cell could have been put together
from an "organic broth" or from contact with clay, ideas which are championed
by the biology books used in many schools.

Fry summarizes the work of most of the
important origin of life scientists and says that they are attempting to
" reduce the irreducibly complex." She means that the goal of their research
is to find methods by which a cell could function without irreducibly complex
molecular machines that would have to have come about by intelligent design.
They are looking for a way that something simple could have survived and
reproduced; something that was simple enough to have started right out
without irreducible complexity, and without a Creator.

Each of the first life researchers presents
a somewhat different scenario by which he hopes to succeed where the others
have failed. Some explain why the attempts of other scientists have not
produced a cell, and theirs may be successful.

My question to Fry and these researchers,
each with his doctor's degrees, standing as it were on the shoulders of
the scientists who came before him is: "If after many more years of accumulating
knowledge and ability, one of you really does succeed in producing life
in a test tube, will you really have shown that life came about with no
intelligent creator involved?" Perhaps the question is irrelevant, because
no one has succeeded in creating life, and I see little hope that they
will. As the research continues, is there some point at which we can say
that their idea that life could have started without a Creator has been
falsified? If it is not falsifiable, it is outside the realm of science,
unless one accepts the new definition of science, and with it the idea
that "… origin of life research consists in looking for a naturalistic
alternative to the idea of the creation of life by a designer."

If the world really accepts the new definition
of science, it will find that in one diabolical act, it has eliminated
both the basis of science as we have known it, and of the morality which
made science possible. Modern science, to prosper requires a certain level
of honesty which has been rooted in the commands of God. Modern science
did not really get moving until after the invention of the printing press
which put the Bible in the hands of a good portion of the people of the
world. It is among those people that modern science flowered. Will the
philosophers of science be able to derive sufficient new moral standards
from the driving force of naturalism: natural selection, the elimination
of the less fit, and the survival of the fittest?

Put it to the test

When you try to find or invent a naturalistic
alternative to anything you know was designed by a mind, a brick for example,
another problem with the new definition becomes obvious. You could say,
"Two inches of clay were deposited in a flat spot on the side of a volcano
between two vertical flat rocks four inches apart. This gave the clay the
shape of a brick. The next eruption heated the clay and baked the brick."
That would be a naturalistic alternative, but instead of helping us understand
how bricks, or cells, or whatever are really made, imaginary naturalistic
scenarios often hide true origins, and impede real science.

In addition, a definition of science like,
"The human activity of seeking natural explanations for what we observe
in the world around us," can only be applied when studying certain specific
things. It cannot be used when studying anything made by people because
this definition only permits us to search among "natural explanations"
for the things around us. Whether we are studying a brick or a complex
new jet aircraft, under the new definition we are to reject the idea of
an intelligent designer, and search for a natural cause, a way that it
could have been put together by the forces of nature. The evidence does
not matter. Under the new definition, the researcher is not allowed to
look where the evidence leads when it leads to an intelligent designer.

In the case of man made objects, we can
easily test the definition because we know they were products of intelligent
design. Any definition which does not permit intelligent design is so wrong
as to be utterly ridiculous, yet, if we strictly apply the new definition,
whether we are studying a cell or an automobile, our conclusion must always
be that it had no intelligent creator. Since the new definition does not
work where it can be put to the test, why in the world would anyone trust
it in areas in which it cannot be put it to the test?

To avoid this problem, an unspoken exception
is made for the cases in which people did the designing. We are expected
to not use the new definition in these cases so as to hide the fact that
it does not work were it can be tested. The test, however, is still valid.
A definition of science that does not work where it can be put to the test
is so obviously faulty that in the long run it may become more of a problem
than a help to our atheist friends who are jumping on that bandwagon.

Having said this, I understand the motivation
for wanting the change. If one is allowed to follow the evidence for the
origin of life wherever it leads, it leads to God. The evidence is so stacked
against a purely naturalistic source for living things that redefining
science seems to be the only way to get there.

Where did presidents come from?

The heads of some of America's most famous
presidents have been carved out of the solid rock of the side of Mount
Rushmore. Because these heads are right out in the wind and the rain, a
visitor who knew nothing about them could ask, "Are these heads a natural
occurrence? Did weathering and erosion just happen to shape the surface
of the rock so it resembles the heads of presidents?"

Someone could ask that, but no one does
because even though the resemblance is not even skin deep, the likeness
of the presidents is so perfect that it is obviously a product of design.
It is the work of a great sculptor. Ask a thousand science teachers. All
of them will give you that kind of an answer. However, caught in the convoluted
web of their own strange logic, many of these same teachers will stand
up in class the next day and teach their students that not only the single
cell with all its complexities, but the very presidents themselves evolved
through the blind forces of nature.

"There is none so blind as he who will
not see!"

1
Peter Keeting, "God and Man in OZ" George,
Oct. 2000, p. 87.

2 Iris Fry, The
Emergence of Life on Earth, 2000,
p. 184.

Adapted from information in the book Answers
to my Evolutionist Friends, How Life Began,
by Thomas F. Heinze, published in 2002 by Chick Publications, 160 pages,
$8.50. or read it free at: